Alex Morgan Excluded from US Women's Soccer Team for Olympics

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00:00I want to focus now and move ahead to this big story that broke yesterday with the Olympics

00:08coming up, because I think this probably surprised some people, and Mike, you're obviously more

00:13familiar with this than people that follow soccer very closely, but when you associate

00:17women's soccer, you think of Alex Morgan almost first, and the announcement was made yesterday

00:23that for the first time since 2008, she is not going to participate on the U.S. women's

00:27team.

00:28Now, you know, for me, I did some research here, and again, not being as completely familiar

00:33with this, I really didn't feel like I came up with a good answer for why that she's not

00:38on this.

00:39You know, some injury speculation, some age speculation as well, nothing that I read led

00:45me to believe that there's a clear answer here.

00:48Well, I honestly, Craig, I think the first answer, I almost wish that this were a World

00:53Cup, because we would know, what exactly does Emma Hayes have in mind?

00:58She was constricted.

00:59She's the new coach for the U.S. women's national team, came to the United States earlier in

01:05a career, and now is coming back as the champion of England's women's Super League with Chelsea,

01:12considered to be one of the great tactical coaches in soccer, and in this case, she only

01:18has 18 players available to her.

01:20That's a really limited roster, and so first off, there's just the numerical factor, and

01:25then there's the factor that Alex is a center forward.

01:28She doesn't do anything else.

01:31Most of the forwards that were chosen for this team are very versatile.

01:35Kind of lacks a center forward unless they play Katarina Macario there, which they may,

01:40but the fact that they decided to use a lot of versatile players to cover for the fact

01:45that they're only allowed 18 really put Alex in a tough spot.

01:50I would be very curious, if this were a 23-player roster, how would it have gone?

01:56Would she have made it?

01:57I really wish I could get an answer to that, but obviously, it's all suppositional.